I used to read kotaku on a daily basis.
i dont read it anymore because i was really annoyed at the copying and pasting from other magazines, or other sources like NeoGAF. I know that all magazines do that but it's not a good reason to do it yourself. Also there's no fact checking in this case, which is despicable.
also, i hated seeing several articles (like 3-5) on the same day about a game that just released. I dont think a publisher orders an article on kotaku like he would a pizza at domino's but sometimes i really wondered why kotaku insisted on a single game when there are other games to cover.
some articles were stupid and sometimes not even related to gaming and the excuse most commonly found was "hey it's a blog, not a website" (although when Totilo became editor in chief he pretty much dismissed that in his editorial). I think there is kotaku.com/core now if we want gaming only news but some of the articles, i find, are still silly on the main site. (well at least at the time at stopped reading kotaku)
if you see a journalist who specializes in finance on tv and who gives his opinion about a bank and you later find out that he is a consultant for this bank or that he gets anything from it, would you still trust what he says, even if he assures you he's a totally ethical guy?
my point is a journalist should never be in a position that could be perceived as a conflict of interest
i used to work for a gaming site as an unpaid reviewer (i was told i could keep the games i reviewed (i was the one who chose which games i wanted to review) I also wrote articles (=copied and pasted) and after a few weeks i just quit because i didnt like the way this gaming website worked. It seemed wrong to me.
After a while i realized that most gaming websites work the same way
im just a guy who likes video games but what made me quit (see above) doesnt seem to worry professional journalists or critics in the slightest.
well, at least im glad to see that some of them think it just makes for a good debate